Artist Statement

"Thus the life of the collector manifests a dialectical tension between the poles of disorder and order." , Walter Benjamin

My series of satellite prints is a collection of collections, in that each print houses a selection of things cut out from Google Satellite View , whether that be swimming pools, parking lots or sections of the Great Salt Lake. Though geographically they represent a vast (and fragmented) amount of landscape, the collections carry with them the feelings of smallness, vulnerability and nostalgia that I find inherent in satellite imagery. These prints are, on the one hand, collapsed pictures of my own disoriented wanderings through the endlessness of a scanned world , endlessly scrolling, endlessly zooming in. But they are also, as in any collection, acts of love. In accumulating, cutting out and ordering each piece of satellite imagery, I have fixed them here against the perpetual tide of updated satellite pictures and the ephemerality of the internet.

Our quoted dimensions are for the size of paper containing the images, not the printed image itself. We do not alter the aspect ratio, nor do we crop or resize the artists’ originals. All of our prints have a minimum border of .5 inches to allow for framing.

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Jenny Odell

Jenny
Odell
is
a
Bay
Area
native
who
mines
imagery
from
online
environments,
most
typically
Google
Maps,
in
an
attempt
to
create
candid
portraits
of
humanity
and
its
built
environment.
Because
her
practice
exists
at
the
intersection
of
research
and
aesthetics,
Odell
has
often
been
compared
to
a
natural
scientist
(specifically,
a
lepidopterist).
Her
work
has
been
exhibited
at
the
Google
Maps
Headquarters,
Les
Rencontres
D'Arles,
Arts
Santa
Monica,
Fotomuseum
Antwerpen,
La
Gaîté
Lyrique
in
Paris,
and
East
Wing
Gallery
in
Dubai.
It's
also
turned
up
in
TIME
Magazine's
LightBox,
The
Atlantic,
The
Economist,
WIRED,
the
NPR
Picture
Show,
and... Read More

Imagine
Architecture
(Gestalten,
2014).
Odell
teaches
at
Stanford
University. Learn
more
about
Jenny in our In
the
Studio
interview and
our
Artist
Spotlight!